


The one where Charles is an alien

by TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: AU, Charles is an alien, Charles is not a mutant, Crack, Erik is badass, Erik totally drives a '67 Chevy Impala, Humour, I have no shame, M/M, Slash, idek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-14
Updated: 2011-11-14
Packaged: 2017-10-26 01:58:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/277353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel/pseuds/TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik breaks into a secret research facility, believing that it is holding mutants. He finds an attractive blue-eyed alien instead.</p><p><i>Erik stared at the alien.<br/>The alien tilted its head and stared back curiously, with intelligent too-blue eyes.<br/>“This is not what I was expecting,” Erik said aloud.<br/></i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The one where Charles is an alien

**Author's Note:**

> So I was supposed to be writing an assignment, but instead I wanted to write fic where Charles is an alien. Crack, I breathe it.

  


  
   


Erik stared at the alien.  
   
The alien tilted its head and stared back curiously, with intelligent too-blue eyes.  
   
“This is not what I was expecting,” Erik said aloud.  
   
What he had been expecting, when he heard the rumours of a top-secret research facility that was home to ethically-dubious experiments, was yet another cursed location where mutants were being held against their will.  
   
What he hadn’t expected was to find a blue-eyed alien sitting happily in a sealed room playing with a blue wibbly thing.  
   
According to the notes Erik had read, the alien was scheduled for vivisection in three days time.  
   
Erik stared at it. It stared innocently back.  
   
“I suppose,” Erik said slowly, “that since I went to all that trouble, I might as well finish the rescue mission.”  
   
After a moment the alien offered him the blue wibbly thing solemnly.  
   
 

 **:  :  :  :  :**

   
   
Erik was used to breaking into research bases and breaking people out, as sad as that statement was, but he’d never rescued an alien before.  
   
The alien was currently sitting in the back seat of the car he’d stolen, bright-eyed and trusting.  
   
Right now it was playing with his hair.  
   
“Don’t do that,” said Erik sternly. He didn’t like to be touched, by anyone, and the alien was no exception.  
   
The alien ignored him, which wasn’t really surprising, since at this point it hadn’t shown any sign that it could understand a word Erik said.  
   
The long slim digits, not quite fingers, wandered down from Erik’s hair and across the back of Erik’s neck, which unfortunately, happened to be ticklish.  
   
“Mein Gott!” Erik yelled, having almost levitated out of his seat. “Stop that!”  
   
He slapped the wandering hands away firmly, hard enough to send a clear message without hurting the absurd creature.  
   
The alien actually looked disappointed and hurt, and Erik felt like an utter bastard.  
   
He thrust the unexpected (and unwelcome) feeling away, and instead stared at the alien in the rear-view mirror.  
   
It was humanoid, with faintly blue-flushed skin and tousled dark hair. It looked almost human, except that all of its bodily proportions were wrong enough to clearly mark it out as different, and some parts of it were clearly inhuman, such as the not-quite-fingers.  
   
Then there were the eyes, those impossibly blue, piercing eyes that conveyed fierce intelligence despite the innocent expression.  
   
The eyes currently meeting his in the mirror, unwaveringly.  
   
Erik swallowed and looked away.  
   
He shouldn’t find the alien this fascinating.  
   
When Erik glanced back again, the alien had turned to stare out the car window at the passing scenery.  
   
They were almost back to where Erik had left his own car, now, and they could ditch the stolen one.  
   
The alien had been surprisingly tractable when it came to following Erik out of the facility, past twisted metal and broken bodies and into the car, and Erik just hoped that it would be just as willing to move across to Erik’s car.  
   
The alien chose this moment to offer him the blue wibbly thing again.  
   
“I have no idea what that is,” Erik told the alien, but it continued to hold the blue wibbly thing out towards him so that it was right by his ear, big and blue in his peripheral vision.  
   
Erik gave a sigh of exasperation and took the blue wibbly thing.  
   
The alien made a pleased noise, and Erik looked down at the thing he was holding, carefully continuing to steer with the other hand.  
   
Still no idea.  
   
“You’re very strange, aren’t you,” Erik said, and held the blue wibbly thing back over his shoulder towards the alien.  
   
The alien accepted it back quite happily, smiling gently at Erik.  
   
Erik looked hastily back out through the windscreen, away from blue eyes, and kept his own resolutely on the road.  
   
 

 **:  :  :  :  :**

   
   
The transfer to Erik’s car went just fine.  
   
After making sure that the alien – Erik _thought_ that it was probably male, although under the circumstances he couldn’t be completely sure – was comfortably settled into the back seat of the Impala where Erik could keep an eye on it Erik walked around to the driver’s seat and climbed in.  
   
He didn’t know what in God’s name he was going to do with the creature. It had been impulsive of him to rescue it, and while Erik knew that he had done a good thing it still left him with an alien on his hands.  
   
“I am a fool,” Erik told himself resignedly.  
   
The alien sent him a look of uncomprehending sympathy in response to his tone of voice and expression, and it actually made Erik feel a little better, heaven help him.  
   
   
   
They stopped late that night to spend what was left of it in a motel, the alien disguised by a heavy coat and a smart hat pulled down low over the eyes. Given the look that the proprietor had sent them Erik suspected that the man thought that they were either Russian spies or sodomites. He decided that this was the proprietor’s problem.  
   
“You must not be seen,” Erik said severely. “You must stay inside out of sight, and if you fail I will string you up by your toes and leave you for the government to rediscover.”  
   
The alien regarded him with an air of polite attention, waited a moment to be sure that he was finished, and then turned back to the television.  
   
There was no sound, but the alien nonetheless appeared fascinated by the technology, even when the image was broken by static or jagged wavy lines across the screen.  
   
“You are not watching that all night,” Erik added, because the alien clearly _would_. “I am giving you until I have changed into my pyjamas an then I am turning it off.”  
   
The alien hit the side of the television set experimentally, and smiled in satisfaction when the picture cleared.  
   
 

 **:  :  :  :  :**

   
   
The next morning presented Erik with two new problems: one, that the alien apparently had no sense of personal boundaries, and two, that the alien was going to need food.  
   
Even before Erik opened his eyes he knew what he was going to see.  
   
He opened them anyway, to see the alien peering contemplatively down at him.  
   
“You have no sense of personal space,” Erik grumbled, pushing the alien back so that he could sit up and swing his legs out of bed.  
   
He grabbed a change of clothes – he was going to need to have his laundry done again soon – and stumbled to the bathroom.  
   
When he came out again the alien had a not-quite-finger pressed to its temple and an expression of abstracted, frowning concentration.  
   
Erik raised his eyebrows at it.  
   
The alien turned its eyes swiftly towards him as though surprised, and its hand dropped, the expression of open innocence returning instantly.  
   
Hmm. Perhaps not as naïve as Erik had assumed.  
   
The alien was smuggled out to the car again in the Russian Spy disguise. The proprietor had muttered something derogatory under his breath when Erik paid the bill but Erik simply gave him a smile with too many teeth, and the other man was suddenly far less hostile.  
   
During this exchange Erik thought that he’d caught the edge of an amused smile, just visible under the brim of the hat, but when he turned to look at the alien all he saw was the default expression of unguarded interest.  
   
Erik hustled it out to the car, but apparently the alien had taken a liking to the double-breasted coat and refused to take it off, so in the end Erik allowed it to keep it on, which produced such a ridiculously smug expression that Erik couldn’t help but smile.  
   
Breakfast was pancakes at a small diner. According to the records where the alien had been held they had been feeding it ordinary, healthy food without any problems, so pancakes served as a safe enough meal.  
   
The alien watched attentively as Erik poured syrup over his pancakes before cutting them into pieces with his knife and fork, and eating them.  
   
After several minutes the alien followed suit, with the careful, clumsy movements of someone learning a new skill. It cut up one of the pancakes into syrup-covered pieces, before stabbing one and raising the fork to its mouth with almost an air of trepidation.  
   
Erik found himself watching.  
   
At the first bite an expression of surprised, delighted pleasure took over the alien’s face. It made a low humming sound deep in its throat, undeniably appreciative, and proceeded to eat the rest of the pancakes with a look of near-rapture.  
   
Erik found himself smiling.  
   
 

 **:  :  :  :  :**

   
   
After breakfast the two of them headed back to the car, the alien still looking faintly blissful. The alien’s surprise and enthusiasm has been hilarious, and Erik had been thoroughly entertained by the entire episode.  
   
It had been a while since anything had made him smile, or prompted that kind of light-hearted amusement. Usually the source of Erik’s amusement was much darker and rooted in irony. The change was refreshing.  
   
Erik switched the radio on and listened as he drove. Most of the music was complete drivel, but one station was playing _Bad Moon Rising._ Erik grinned and sang along unashamedly. Singing along to songs on the radio was not an activity that he would ever admit to, but the only person to hear him here was the alien, and as he was apparently incapable of speaking English Erik was pretty sure he was fine.  
   
After a while the alien drifted off into a nap, possibly in reaction to the enormous amount of syrup that it had poured over its pancakes. Erik made a mental note to limit its sugar intake next time.  
   
Glancing over his shoulder into the back seat (where the alien was drooling slightly on Erik’s coat, damn it) Erik wondered here the alien had come from, and how it had ended up in the base where he had found it.  
   
Did it have a spaceship, somewhere? Had it crashed? Had it come to Earth accidentally, or was there some purpose behind its visit?  
   
At first Erik would have assumed that the alien had ended up here by accident, but it was undoubtedly intelligent, and Erik was beginning to suspect that it was a lot more shrewd than he had originally given it credit for.  
   
Erik sighed, and wondered if there was any way to find answers.  
   
The alien murmured something incoherent and musical in its sleep, and Erik looked back to see it curled up in a way that someone who wasn’t Erik might have described as adorable.  
   
Erik scowled as he realised that his expression had softened at the sight.  
   
 

 **:  :  :  :  :**

   
   
They were driving down a long, empty stretch of highway when the alien suddenly jolted awake in the back.  
   
The excitable thing sat up and gestured to the side of the road, looking between Erik and the area that it was pointing to. Not being an imbecile, Erik correctly interpreted the gesture to mean that he should pull over.  
   
Frowning, Erik did so, wondering what was going on.  
   
The moment that the car stilled the alien was out the door. Erik swore and left the car as well.  
   
The alien stopped a few metres from the car, however, and looked up expectantly.  
   
It was then that Erik heard the sound that the alien had presumably heard several minutes earlier: a thin, whistling, unearthly sound, rapidly growing louder. He looked up, and gaped.  
   
 _What on God’s earth –_  
   
 ** _That would be my ship,_** said a voice in Erik’s head, clearly and calmly. Each word was well-enunciated in a vaguely upper-class British accent.  
   
Erik slowly turned his head to stare at the alien.  
   
The blue eyes were looking at him, serene and aware, and unmistakably amused.  
   
Erik relieved his feelings by swearing at it in German.  
   
 ** _My apologies for the deception._** Erik could _hear_ the amusement. **_I’m afraid that it’s standard operational policy to pretend an inability to communicate when captured by natives. You however have shown me nothing but kindness, and I feel that it would be churlish of me not to reveal the truth before I rejoin my crewmates._**  
   
“But you were a prisoner,” Erik argued, an unwelcome suspicion beginning to flicker on in his brain.  
   
 ** _A necessary circumstance,_** the alien agreed. **_The purpose of my stay, so to speak, was to gauge the degree of unrestrained xenophobia evident among your species. I was able to escape at any time._**  
   
Erik swore again.  
   
“So you could escape on your own,” he said flatly. “Why come with me?”  
   
The alien gave the approximation of an ingenuous shrug, eyes wide and blue.  
   
 ** _I was studying your species, remember. It seemed wise to widen my sample of subjects when the opportunity presented itself._** A beat. **_And to tell you the truth, I found you interesting.”_**  
   
“What?”  
   
 ** _You are a killer,_** the alien explained, **_who murders without remorse or hesitation, and yet paradoxically you do so out of your deep respect for life. I found your stance intriguing._**  
   
Erik was surprised to find that the words unexpectedly stung.  
   
The alien immediately ventured to lay a hand on his shoulder, digits curling in a gentle grip.  
   
 ** _I am sorry, my friend. It was not my intent to wound you. I assure you that you have my respect and liking, regardless of our differing moral perspectives._**  
   
There was no anger or disgust or condemnation in that crisp mental voice, only the pulse of understanding and cool friendliness.  
   
It shouldn’t have taken the bite out of the alien’s words, but somehow it did.  
   
 ** _My people are tolerant._** The alien appeared to have followed Erik’s train of thought. **_We do not make ethnocentric judgements, which all moralistic judgements essentially are, you know. That would be both unethical and illogical._**  
   
Erik frowned in confusion, trying to work out how expecting someone to adhere to basic moral standards was either unethical or illogical.  
   
 ** _Your moral code is not ours. I have seen enough to learn that killing to protect another from harm is morally-defensible within your culture. A good xenoanthropologist holds no bias._**  
   
Erik had to take a moment to unravel that one from the root Greek words upwards in order to understand what the alien meant.  
   
The idea of someone who was genuinely, truly impartial was a difficult one to grasp. Erik was fairly sure he only managed it because the alien was in his head, helpfully transmitting the ghost of alien emotions along with its words.  
   
And Erik should have been angry about that, considering his fierce regard for privacy, but he found the fact that the alien was sitting comfortably _in his mind_ strangely unthreatening.  
   
 ** _I hate to bring an end to our discussion,_** the alien said apologetically, **_but my people are ready to teleport me now. I am afraid that this is where we part. It was an unadulterated pleasure to meet you, Erik Lehnsherr._**  
   
The mental tone was utterly sincere, and those ridiculously blue eyes were staring frankly into his.  
   
If Erik had known what he was going to do, he would most probably have restrained himself, so he was grateful for the fact that he had no idea that he was going to kiss the alien until he did.  
   
It was a brief, warm press of lips, soft and firm. Erik could faintly smell the alien’s scent, clean and peculiar but not unpleasant.  
   
He pulled back after only an instant, to see surprised blue eyes dancing with laughter.  
   
 ** _I’ll take that as a compliment,_** the alien said, its voice once again filled with merriment.  
   
“Good,” Erik said firmly. “I’m glad to have met you, as well.”  
   
The alien smiled at him fully for the first time, the expression breath-takingly charming and bright.  
   
Erik was not the poetic sort, but he could not help comparing that smile to the break of dawn.  
   
 ** _I am glad,_** the alien said simply, and then looked up, just before it was enveloped in white light.  
   
When the light died there was no sign of the alien, and the feel of it inside Erik’s head was gone.  
   
The absence left him feeling unexpectedly lonely – and yet, somehow Erik felt less alone than he had before.  
   
Shaking his head at himself, he returned to the car.  
   
He was aware that he was once again smiling. 

**Author's Note:**

> (Postscript: It wasn't until the next day that Erik realised that the alien had stolen his expensive wool coat.)
> 
>  
> 
> Also, Erik driving a '67 chevy Impala is my head!canon. Because [we all know badasses drive Impalas.](http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/index.php?title=Impala)


End file.
